“They may not think of it, but I know,” he muttered to himself.  And he sat down upon his bed to plan how best to meet them, and others.  He did not know what he was going to encounter, but he fortified himself against calamity.  Strange portent of this had crossed the sea to haunt him.  As soon as he was sure of what had happened in Middleville, of the attitude people would have toward a crippled soldier, and of what he could do with the month or year that might be left him to live, then he would know his own mind.  All he sensed now was that there had been some monstrous inexplicable alteration in hope, love, life.  His ordeal of physical strife, loneliness, longing was now over, for he was back home.  But he divined that his greater ordeal lay before him, here in this little house, and out there in Middleville.  All the subtlety, intelligence, and bitter vision developed by the war sharpened here to confront him with terrible possibilities.  Had his countrymen, his people, his friends, his sweetheart, all failed him?  Was there justice in Blair Maynard’s scorn?  Lane’s faith cried out in revolt.  He augmented all possible catastrophe, and then could not believe that he had sacrificed himself in vain.  He knew himself.  In him was embodied all the potentiality for hope of the future.  And it was with the front and stride of a soldier, facing the mystery, the ingratitude, the ignorance and hell of war, that he left his room and went down stairs to meet the evils in store.

His mother was not in the kitchen.  The door stood open.  He heard her outside talking to a neighbor woman, over the fence.

“—­Daren looks dreadful,” his mother was saying in low voice.  “He could hardly walk....  It breaks my heart.  I’m glad to have him along—­but to see him waste away, day by day, like Mary Dean’s boy—­” she broke off.

“Too bad!  It’s a pity,” replied the neighbor.  “Sad—­now it comes home to us.  My son Ted came in last night and said he’d talked with a boy who’d seen young Maynard and the strange soldier who was with him.  They must be worse off than Daren—­Blair Maynard with only one leg and—­”

“Mother, where are you?  I’m hungry,” called Lane, interrupting that conversation.

She came hurriedly in, at once fearful he might have heard, and solicitous for his welfare.

“Daren, you look better in daylight—­not so white,” she said.  “You sit down now, and let me get your breakfast.”

Lane managed to eat a little this morning, which fact delighted his mother.

“I’m going to see Dr. Bronson,” said Lane, presently.  “Then I’ll go to Manton’s, and round town a little.  And if I don’t tire out I’ll call on Helen.  Of course Lorna has gone to work?”

“Oh yes, she leaves at half after eight.”

“Mother, I was awake last night when she got home,” went on Lane, seriously.  “It was one o’clock.  She came in a car.  I heard girls tittering.  And some boy came up on the porch with Lorna and kissed her.  Well, that might not mean much—­but something about their talk, the way it was done—­makes me pretty sick.  Did you know this sort of thing was going on?”